Subject: So You Think YOU Had a Bad Day . . .
* A fierce gust of wind blew 45-year-old Vittorio Luise's car into a
river near Naples, Italy, in 1983. He managed to break a window, climb
out and swim to shore -- where a tree blew over and killed him.
* Mike Stewart, 31, of Dallas was filming a movie in 1983 on the
dangers of low-level bridges when the truck he was standing on passed
under a low-level bridge -- killing him.
* Walter Hallas, a 26-year-old store clerk in Leeds, England, was so
afraid of dentists that in 1979 he asked a fellow worker to try to
cure his toothache by punching him in the jaw. The punch caused Hallas
to fall down, hitting his head, and he died of a fractured skull.
* Two West German motorists had an all-too-literal head-on collision
in heavy fog near the small town of Guetersloh. Each was guiding his
car at a snail's pace near the center of the road. At the moment of
impact their heads were both out of the windows when they smacked
together. Both men were hospitalized with severe head injuries. Their
cars weren't scratched.
* George Schwartz, owner of a factory in Providence, R.I., narrowly
escaped death when a 1983 blast flattened his factory except for one
wall. After treatment for minor injuries, he returned to the scene to
search for files. The remaining wall then collapsed on him, killing
him.
* Depressed since he could not find a job, 42-year-old Romolo Ribolla
sat in his kitchen near Pisa, Italy, with a gun in his hand
threatening to kill himself in 1981. His wife pleaded for him not to
do it, and after about an hour he burst into tears and threw the gun
to the floor. It went off and killed his wife.
* In 1983, a Mrs. Carson of Lake Kushaqua, N.Y., was laid out in her
coffin, presumed dead of heart disease. As mourners watched, she
suddenly sat up. Her daughter dropped dead of fright.
* A man hit by a car in New York in 1977 got up uninjured, but laid
back down in front of the car when a bystander told him to pretend he
was hurt so he could collect insurance money. The car rolled forward
and crushed him to death.
* Surprised while burgling a house in Antwerp, Belgium, a thief fled
out the back door, clambered over a nine-foot wall, dropped down and
found himself in the city prison.
* In 1976 a twenty-two-year-old Irishman, Bob Finnegan, was crossing
the busy Falls Road in Belfast, when he was struck by a taxi and flung
over its roof. The taxi drove away and, as Finnegan lay stunned in the
road, another car ran into him, rolling him into the gutter. It too
drove on. As a knot of gawkers gathered to examine the magnetic
Irishman, a delivery van plowed through the crowd, leaving in its wake
three injured bystanders and an even more battered Bob Finnegan. When
a fourth vehicle came along, the crowd wisely scattered and only one
person was hit, Bob Finnegan. In the space of two minutes Finnegan
suffered a fractured skull, broken pelvis, broken leg, and other
assorted injuries. Hospital officials said he would recover.
* While motorcycling through the Hungarian countryside, Cristo Falatti
came up to a railway line just as the crossing gates were coming down.
While he sat idling, he was joined by a farmer with a goat, which the
farmer tethered to the crossing gate. A few moments later a horse and
cart drew up behind Falatti, followed in short order by a man in a
sports car. When the train roared through the crossing, the horse
startled and bit Falatti on the arm. Not a man to be trifled with,
Falatti responded by punching the horse in the head. In consequence
the horse's owner jumped down from his cart and began scuffling with
the motorcyclist. The horse, which was not up to this sort of
excitement, backed away briskly, smashing the cart into the sports
car. At this, the sports car driver leaped out of his car and joined
the fray. The farmer came forward to try to pacify the three flailing
men. As he did so, the crossing gates rose and his goat was strangled.
At last report, the insurance companies were still trying to sort out
the claims.
* In a classic case of one thing leading to another, seven men aged
eighteen to twenty-nine received jail sentences of three to four years
in Kingston-on-Thames, England, in 1979 after a fight that started
when one of the men threw a french fry at another while they stood
waiting for a train.
* Hitting on the novel idea that he could end his wife's incessant
nagging by giving her a good scare, Hungarian Jake Fen built an
elaborate harness to make it look as if he had hanged himself. When
his wife came home and saw him she fainted. Hearing a disturbance a
neighbor came over and, finding what she thought were two corpses,
seized the opportunity to loot the place. As she was leaving the room,
her arms laden, the outraged and suspended Mr. Fen kicked her stoutly
in the backside. This so surprised the lady that she dropped dead of a
heart attack. Happily, Mr. Fen was acquitted of manslaughter and he
and his wife were reconciled.
* An unidentified English woman, according to the London Sunday
Express was climbing into the bathtub one afternoon when she
remembered she had left some muffins in the oven. Naked, she dashed
downstairs and was removing the muffins when she heard a noise at the
door. Thinking it was the baker, and knowing he would come in and
leave a loaf of bread on the kitchen table if she didn't answer his
knock, the woman darted into the broom cupboard. A few moments later
she heard the back door open and, to her eternal mortification, the
sound of footsteps coming toward the cupboard. It was the man from the
gas company, coming to read the meter. "Oh," stammered the woman, "I
was expecting the baker." The gas man blinked, excused himself and
departed.